To a Place Where We Ache
by farewellblindgirl
Summary: What happens when they get to cheat, and read the last page first? Set immediately after 'Flowers for Your Grave'
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The Characters are borrowed, lovingly, from Castle. The plot is likewise borrowed from FlashForward, the novel. I get squat for doing this, other than the pleasure of putting words in their proper arrangements.

 **A/N:** This is a little triffle of a thing, only about 6,000 words total, but I couldn't get it out of my head, when it arrived, fully formed with bags and baggage and holed itself up in the guest room of my brain. It's odd and shaggy, written in one sitting (which I never do) and I had to get it out so that I could get back to working on other things. And now that I've properly undersold it...

* * *

Kate Beckett gets home late, just as she has every night since she joined the force. Tonight her lateness had been in service to paperwork around the oddest case of her young career. A copycat killer that wasn't, and a case broken by a writer who was exactly unlike everything she'd ever hoped he'd be.

She had worked a case with Richard Castle. Weird. So weird. And she'd arrested him to boot.

She goes through her fridge, grabs the fixings for a sandwich, happy that she's shopped for once. She also grabs a bottle of wine and opens it before she starts assembling her weak little dinner. Let's the wine breathe.

She needs to breathe herself.

It was a lucky thing that her favorite author had turned out to be such a pompous ass, because even being frustrated by him, she'd been half ready to take up his offer to be mutual conquests. Would that have been a really horrible idea or a really great one?

Horrible. Absolutely horrible. And yet, there was still a bit of regret buried there when she thought about it.

But she was done thinking about it.

She's halfway through making the sandwich when a wave of nausea hits her, and she has to drop the bread, grab the edge of her kitchen counter to steady herself. The room spins like she is drunk, but the wine remains untouched next to the cutting board.

She takes a few deep breaths and the nausea passes.

And then, all of a sudden, she feels herself blacking out.

Next thing she knew, she is walking down an wood paneled hallway she doesn't recognize. It doesn't feel like she's in a dream, everything is clear and sharp and real, but she doesn't seem to be able to control herself either. Her body feels strong, and she moves quickly. She can't make her body stop. It's like she's a passenger inside herself.

She hears a voice near her. Out of the corner of her eye, she can tell there is a woman about her age walking beside her. She's short, with pale skin, long red hair, and huge blue eyes. The woman is staring at a binder she holds in front of her as they walk.

"...and I've moved your meeting with Senator Morrow to Thursday. He wants to talk farm subsidies..."

"He's going to want to talk about H.R. 242," she interrupts. How does she even speak? It's like she's watching, from inside herself, unable to actually control anything.

"He wants to talk farm subsidies, trust me," the redhead continues. Kate finds her vaguely familiar, like she's seen her in a crowd before, but she's not sure where. She wants to look over, get a closer look at the woman, but she can't force her head to turn. She just keeps moving with purpose down the hallway.

"I'll worry about Morrow later. Looking at the weather, I assume my flight is delayed?"

"Um, about that. Fog has everything shut down on the Eastern Seaboard. Flight's cancelled."

"Dammit, I need to be in New York tomorrow morning."

"I know. So I arranged... um ... alternate travel."

Kate and the redhead push through double doors and Kate finds herself on the street. It's cold and dark, with a thick fog laying in close against the building. Kate sees a long limo waiting in the street. She turns back to the redhead.

"My alternate travel?" she asks. She can feel that she already knows the answer, and her mouth is turning up in a half smirk. The redhead, and she really is familiar, is unfazed, and just smiles back. She's about twenty-nine, probably a contemporary or near contemporary of Kate herself. Maybe Kate knows her from college?

"Have a good trip. And say hi to Dad for me."

Kate feels herself smiling fully before leaning in and briefly hugging the other woman. Dad, she thinks to herself - this woman acts like she's a sister. Odd. But Kate's body ... she's having trouble separating what she feels from what her body is feeling for her ... seems unfazed by this fake sister. She ... her body... just squeezes the woman's upper arm, turns, and gets in the limo. Everything is weird, and Kate is rapidly feeling sick at this rollercoaster sense of merely being along for the ride.

The limo isn't empty.

Sitting across from her is Richard Castle.

Richard Castle? Really?

He looks different from how he did when she left him a few hours ago. He's clean shaven, with shorter hair. He's older and he's put on some weight. He looks more distinguished and less pompous. She can feel her body reacting to his presence even more acutely than she did when she left him on the street. She wants him. She slides across the seat and crawls into his lap, kissing him without a moment's hesitation.

It feels both familiar and new at the same time, and she can feel herself reacting immediately, that low heavy feeling just below her stomach. They kiss for a minute or two before she stops it.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you," she says (and at the same time, Kate wonders how she was able to stop when every nerve in her body seems to be yelling for more) and she feels him laugh beneath her, "but where are the girls?"

"I thought we had a rule against mentioning the kids in the midst of doing, you know, this?"

"Castle," she says. Really? She calls him by his last name in the middle of making out with him?

Wait, she's making out with him. What the hell?

"Jo's at a sleepover at Elaine's, and Bennie is going to bring Ellie over to stay with Alexis tonight. Alexis'll bring them both up to New York on Tuesday."

"Oh good. So... is the car taking us all the way to New York tonight?"

"Yup, and the privacy screen is locked."

"Mmmmmm," she says, and goes back to kissing him. She's never been attracted to older men as a rule, Royce excepted, but she finds herself wanting Castle more than she's ever wanted anyone. If this version of Castle, older, confident, comfortable without being arrogant, had shown up for their case together, she would've dragged him off somewhere and never come up for air.

Can you be a voyeur in your own body? Kate isn't in control, but she can hear and feel and see everything. Castle's hands are practiced, and her own move with the grace of experience. She can tell that she ... that this body ... is attuned to Castle's, that this isn't a first time experience. A small part of her mind can feel his wedding ring as his hand runs into her hair, and she can feel her own ring snag on his shirt for a second as she undoes buttons.

The sex is brief, but wholly satisfying, and Kate is sure she could come up with better adjectives if she hadn't just been a witness to herself making love to Richard Castle in the back of a limo... and are they married? Everything about them, how they talk, how they move, screams of two people who are long and deeply connected to each other.

Crap. This is just ... it's just too much for words.

She slides off of his lap when they are done, and they redress, not that they really stripped down, before she rests herself in the crook of his arm.

"So, I have some news," he says, and she can feel her heart rate jumping back up, like she knows what his news is.

But before he can continue, she blacks out again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I do own Castle. I just post here because I hate making money off if it. Not.

 **A/N:** This is short, but the story as a whole isn't that long. Next chapter up shortly.

* * *

When she wakes up, she's still leaning against her kitchen counter, the half made sandwich still in front of her, the wine still untouched on the counter. She goes to the sink, splashes water on her face. Her heart is still racing, and she can feel the ghost of Castle's fingers on her skin, still.

It's the oddest dream she's ever had. Except it isn't. Odd, certainly. Dream? She's not sure.

She pats the water off her face as her heart calms down, and before she can think too much about why she's just had a waking dream or hallucination or vision or whatever, her phone rings.

She answers the phone, hoping for a distraction.

"Hey," Espo says on the other end of the line. "We need you here."

"We got a body?"

"No," he says, and he sounds very off to her, like he's drunk, almost. "Nine one one just crashed. We got calls coming in from all over the city. They're calling all hands on deck."

"What's going on?"

"Dunno. It's from everywhere. Get here."

* * *

For the next three days, everything is chaos. She'd had to walk to the precinct that first night, with hundreds of accidents on the roadways and subway platforms. It turns out she isn't the only person to experience a blackout. She'll learn in the days to come what everyone else learns too - that every human being on Earth experienced something similar at the exact same moment. A collective hallucination that bound the whole human race.

Home alone in her kitchen that night, she was safe. But for thousands of others, driving cars, operating machinery, flying planes, it was anything but.

The whole city descends into chaos, and for her that means a return to patrol duty, getting people around accidents and helping the Department of Transportation to get the roads functional once more. Then, traffic under control, she's pulled back to the precinct, not to chase down murders, but simply to help identify bodies, locate next of kin, and try to get things back to some sense of normalcy. She visits five years worth of homes in five days, giving news and offering condolences.

In the days after, the media and everyone else starts calling it 'The Event.'

After a report comes out that reveals that The Event was a collective transportation to the future - that everyone on Earth got to experience a few minutes of their own life, fifteen years forward - the suicides start rolling in. People who saw nothing at all, or saw things they hated, saw things that scared them. So Kate, Espo, and the rest of New York's Finest find themselves fighting a second wave of deaths.

After six days, things calm down enough that she can leave the precinct house, go home, and recover. She crawls into bed and sleeps for nineteen hours.

When she wakes up, she has to use the bathroom, get some food and a shower, and find some answers, in that order.

And she's going to have to deal with Castle. She just has no idea how.

* * *

 **A/N:** The overall plot - a worldwide mass hallucination (of sorts) is ripped, pretty much verbatim, from Robert Sawyer's excellent 'FlashForward.' The book is highly worth it, even if the TV show was not. This is not a crossover, so only the concept is taken. But, if you like the idea, go find the book.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** Man...I don't own squat.

* * *

Richard Castle's fingers are moving too slowly. He's a decent typist - you don't remain a slow one after banging out twenty two books - but he's so inspired that his fingers can't seem to keep up with what's in his head.

He hasn't felt like this in awhile. Not since the first Storm book, maybe.

Getting real police experience has reignited ... no, he's not going to lie to himself, being around Kate Beckett for a few days has reignited his writing. He can't get enough of her onto the page fast enough. He feels like he's going to explode, in a good way.

And then he just feels like he's going to explode.

The vertigo washes over him quickly, and he feels like he's going to fall out of his chair. He manages to get the laptop to safety on his desk, and then a second wave of vertigo hits him. This time he does fall out of his chair.

But he doesn't land on the carpet. Instead, he finds himself in a limo.

Usually he blacks out after the limo ride, not before, and, really, despite however he may have joked with Beckett about his lifestyle in the interrogation room (he was in an interrogation room!), he isn't a blackout drunk kind of guy. Besides, he hasn't been drinking.

He tries to look around, but can't. He can't seem to move his head, and as he tries, he realizes he's speaking.

"I know, right?" he hears himself say into a phone. He feels like a puppet, or ... what was that movie? Being John Malkovich. He feels like Malkovich, or like Cusack, the guy who is Malkoviched. Is that the right analogy? He can't think.

"It's election week, Paula, things are going to be busy," he hears himself continue.

"...being married to a National Book Award winner is going to help your wife get a little boost in the polls, Rick. I'll work with her people," Paula says over the phone.

"Fine, but I get to tell her first. I'll see her in a minute."

"Okay. Let me know, and ... congratulations, Rick."

He hangs up the phone. He can feel that he is giddy, and yet he's also confused. It's like there are two of him. His Malkovichy self seems over the moon. His real self is amazed. The National Book Award?

He hangs up the phone, and briefly notes, as he drops the phone into the console, that his hand has a wedding ring on it, and Paula said something about being married too. He's married? How many times is he going to return to that well? He was sure he was done after Gina; has kept all of his (few? some?) dalliances brief and light since then.

Before he can think any more about it, the door to the limo opens, and a tall woman slides in. She's slender, older - maybe forty five by the way she carries herself, but maybe thirty, based on her looks - with long brown hair that hangs in waves past her shoulders, and ...

Oh God, he thinks. It's Kate Beckett.

It's not the Kate Beckett he saw a few hours ago. She's aged since then, her hair has changed, grown out, but there's more to it than a change of hairstyle. The Kate he left on the street had been beautiful and mysterious and haunted. There's beauty and mystery in this woman too, but something more. What was haunted is now lively and powerful. The smile is freer and the eyes almost impish.

And if he'd been attracted to the first Beckett - well, now he wants to drop to one knee on the spot and spend his life with this other Beckett.

She smiles at him as she slides across the black leather seat and ends up in his lap. His hands slip around her with a practiced ease, and he takes her mouth without a moment's hesitation.

There is something in the way that his body and Beckett's move together that makes him realize this isn't the first time between the two of them. Maybe not even the thousandth time, and yet he can still feel the arousal building quickly.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you," she says, "but where are the girls?"

What girls, he wonders?

"I thought we had a rule against mentioning the kids in the midst of doing, you know, this?" he hears himself ask. They have kids?

"Castle," she says, and he can hear the admonishment. They have that shorthand that old married couples seem to get, that he always wanted with Meredith or Gina and never got.

Of course, he prefers the making out. Even if he's just a passive participant, he still seems to be able to feel...everything.

"Jo's at a sleepover at Elaine's, and Bennie is going to bring Ellie over to stay with Alexis tonight. She'll bring them both up to New York on Tuesday," he says. Stay with Alexis? Alexis is fourteen, she can't watch ... oh, but if they have kids, this is obviously the future. How far?

The future. Wow. If that's true, his dreams really do come true. Is this a dream? It doesn't feel like it. And he can't believe his subconscious could think up something as luminous as the version of Beckett that is in his lap.

"Oh good. So... is the car taking us all the way to New York tonight?"

"Yup, and the privacy screen is locked."

"Mmmmmm," she says, and goes back to kissing him. And he realizes, very quickly that she was right - he had no idea. This is just a back of the limo quickie ( _just_ ... as if anything with this woman could be _just..._ ) and they've obviously... their Malkovichian selves... have been at this before, and yet it's still the best sex he's ever had in his life.

After they finish, she cuddles up against him, and he feels like he's ready to cry. Post-coital crying isn't a habit of his, but shit... getting an especially vivid dream of a future you never even thought you had the right to dream? It's overwhelming in a way that's even too overwhelming for him to try to put into coherent thoughts.

"So, I have some news," he hears himself say, and he can feel her body tense up next to him. But it's tense in a way that's pleasant, not nervous, like she can feel the happiness in his body, or maybe, if they are as close as they seem, she already has an inclination of what he's going to say.

But he never finds out. The vertigo hits again, and he wakes up face down in the carpet of his study.

He doesn't get up for a long time.

* * *

Due to what rapidly becomes known as 'The Event,' Alexis' school is cancelled for a few days. As reports come in of car and plane crashes, Castle is incredibly relieved that his daughter and mother were both home when the blackout happened. They all spend days on the couch, glued to the TV. It reminds Castle and his mother of 9/11 all over again.

Castle finds his mother's vision interesting. She claims to have been on a Broadway stage, receiving a second curtain call for her performance. He dismisses it as a wish fulfilling hallucination, just as he fears his own has been, until Alexis finally breaks down and shares her own vision. An older Alexis apparently works as Chief of Staff or similiar for a beautiful senator. They discuss upcoming meetings before she puts the senator in a limo with him, then goes off and video chats her boyfriend about having a night in. He's pretty certain that the senator she puts in the car is Kate, though he doesn't tell Alexis that.

For most of the first few days, none of them will let their visions go, and Castle knows why. They all saw something in their visions that they really really wanted. Castle understands the feeling. He admits the parts of his own vision that corroborates Alexis', but he leaves the rest vague. The sex he omits entirely.

When the news reports start announcing that everyone in the world experienced the same thing - a collective viewing of fifteen minutes, fifteen years in the future - and when CERN gives a very hard to understand reason why everyone experienced it, validating it all as true, he texts Kate Beckett. He has no idea what he'll say to her, if she'll ever acknowledges him, but he knows he can't leave it either. Not if it was real; not if it means she experienced it too.

He texts her several more times, until he realizes that the police and fire departments are all on call, handling far bigger issues. Then he lets it go. He got enough of a sense of Beckett to know she'll follow up in her own time, and he can't really push. But his curiosity builds and builds. Unlike a dream, his visions of Beckett don't fade or get quieter over time. When the roads get mostly cleared and Alexis goes back to school, he goes back to writing furiously, even more so than before. He finds himself working on two books at once. One about a hot and troubled cop. One about a beautiful and refined Senator. Two books - a mystery and a political thriller - and yet, one main character.

It keeps the need under control, mostly, until she shows up on his doorstep, a full seven days after the incident.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** I OWN ALL OF THE THINGS! MINE! MINE! MINE! Okay, not actually mine...

 **A/N:** I apologize for the completely random chapter lengths.

* * *

She finds herself in front of the large steel door of his apartment with no better idea of what to say than she did days ago. But she can't put this off - oddly enough, she doesn't want to. She won't admit it to anyone, but she wants what she saw. She wants it more and more as the days go on.

Esposito and Ryan and everyone else, in moments of downtime over the last several days, have hounded her over what was in her vision. It's really the only topic of conversation for the entire world for a couple of days. Ryan shares a story about putting his daughter and son to bed, happily recounting how their looks make him certain is going to go marry a good blonde Irish girl. Esposito had felt robbed in comparison, having spent his future moment watching a movie, although he'd happily noted he wasn't alone. And that the movie seemed cool.

Montgomery adamantly refused to talk about his future. And he refused to explain why.

Karpowski was depressed because she was living with her mother, McMurtry claimed to be living in a mansion. Perlmutter told everyone he was living alone in the woods, which surprised no one. Lanie admitted to also being at a movie, which lead to some tense speculation until everyone realized that Lanie and Esposito weren't at the same movie. But they start spending more time together anyway.

So Beckett, beyond her own normal reserve, isn't overly willing to share her future, feeling like she got something bigger and better than she really deserved. She admits to very little - just a quiet conversation with her future husband. She skips the sex, the limo, the unknown role in politics, or the kids. She really avoids admitting that her future husband is Richard Castle. However, around the second day, when she's been awake far too long to properly censor herself, she does reveal to Lanie that she knows her future husband, which earns her a squeal.

She gets out of giving details by agreeing to go after the man as soon as she can. It's not a tough deal, because she finds herself wanting to go after him anyway.

And that's how she finds herself at Castle's apartment. Luckily she still had his file, since they hadn't put anything away yet due to The Event. It allows her to look up his address and show up at his door without calling ahead first.

She's not going to get smarter, staring at his door, so she breaks down and knocks.

A short redheaded girl answers the door. The girl and Kate stare at each other for several seconds, recognition dawning for both of them at the same time. She's met Alexis earlier, when she and her grandmother had come to bail Castle out of jail, but she's never connected the dots between this young girl and the beautiful woman who'd been in her vision. But they are definitely one and the same.

"You!" Alexis says by way of greeting, and then turns her head back into the apartment. "I thought you said you didn't know her!" she calls back into the room, and Kate realizes that Alexis has gone through the same realization.

"Can I come in?" Kate asks.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry," Alexis says, "Please, come in."

Kate follows the girl into the apartment, and quickly realizes that apartment is the wrong word. It's a large loft, with twenty foot ceilings, a large fireplace, and very understated and tasteful decorations. But it's cozy too, feeling more like a home than many of the rich homes she's visited in the course of doing her job.

"Detective Beckett," Castle says as greeting when she comes into the room. She notices that the swagger he'd shown during the case is gone. "It's good to see you again. You remember my daughter, Alexis?"

"Kate," Kate says, holding out her hand. Alexis shakes it. Having Alexis call her Detective Beckett seems wrong, all of a sudden.

"I saw you," Alexis says, and any last hope or worry that any of them had that this was all a dream dissipates.

"I saw you too."

"No, I mean," Alexis says, "I remember you from bailing Dad out, but I didn't figure..."

"Oh," Kate says, "No, it's okay. I didn't put it together either until just now."

"So, um, would you like a seat?" Alexis asks, offering her the couch. Kate nods, and all three of them sit. She's nervous and fumbling as hell, but at least Rick and Alexis are too.

She decides to address Alexis, first.

"So, I, um, ... we were walking down a hallway. I'm not sure where." She doesn't have to explain what she's talking about. It's been en vogue to share your future vision with people. The ultimate icebreaker.

Alexis shakes her head. "I don't know where we were either, but I think it was in Washington D.C."

"Why do you say that?" Kate asks, even though she suspects why. But she's realizing she can treat this whole thing as a witness interview and feel like she's on more solid ground if she does so.

"I had a piece of paper. It said 'The Senator's Schedule' on it, which I guess now was you. And the hallway sort of reminded me of one of some of the Capitol buildings my class toured last summer. That and I said something about sending you in a car to New York, so we couldn't be here, but we had to be in driving distance, right?"

Kate nods. Castle's daughter is young, but extremely bright. Is that Castle's influence or her mother's? "And then, after I get into the limo, what happened?"

"I watched you pull away from the curb, and then I went back inside. It was cold. In the hallway I pulled out my... it was sort of like an iPhone, but, you know, way more futuristic. It had a video screen, and I called someone named Brad."

She looks over at Castle. He's heard all of this, she knows, but he's still listening intently.

"I could tell ... he's my boyfriend, I think. Or husband, maybe? I don't know, but I got the sense that we lived together. We made plans. I was going to get food and he was going to get someone named Ellie and we were babysitting her, I guess? I don't know who Ellie is, but it seemed like it wasn't, you know, the first time we'd babysat together?"

Kate doesn't mention that she's pretty sure that Ellie is her daughter, making her Alexis's stepsister. She wonders if Castle has covered that part. From Alexis' confusion, it doesn't seem like he has.

"And what was this guy like? Did you get a name?"

"Brad. I called him Brad," Alexis says, and blushes. She's so pale that the blush just washes over her face, and she looks down. Kate can tell that Alexis must've had strong feelings for this Brad person. She looks at the girl - she's probably only about fourteen - and realizes that she must've been overwhelmed by what she's seen and felt.

Hell, Kate thinks. She's almost thirty. She's been in love before, and yet she can barely control the feelings that well up whenever she recalls the vision, even a week later. Though proximity to the source of those feelings isn't helping.

"So, Detective Beckett..."

"Please, call me Kate," Kate says again, because she doesn't feel like she's on duty here, and these visions have sort of accelerated a sense of intimacy for people.

"Kate," Alexis continues, "What happened after you got in the limo? Dad won't tell me, other than he was there and you talked."

Kate nearly chokes.

Castle jumps off the couch, spurred into motion. "We're being bad hosts. Can I get you a drink? Wine?"

Kate nods. "Wine would be good."

She gets a moment to regroup as the Castles go and start getting drinks. She catches Castle's eye as he passes, and they share a brief look. The asshole she met on the case seems to be gone, replaced with this endearingly dorky father figure. She feels guilty for a second, that she'd thought so badly of him without getting the whole story. He apologies to her with his eyes, and she nods, then follows them into the kitchen, sitting at the island.

Castle pours two glasses of white wine, and Alexis grabs some things out of the fridge. Before she can tell them not to go to any trouble, they have wine and a cheese plate in front of her.

They talk idly for a minute or two as Kate and Castle enjoy a few sips of wine. Kate distracts Alexis by asking normal questions, learns that Alexis is fourteen, loves school, and lives with Castle full time. The last one surprises her, but then she finds out that Castle's mother lives with them too and she's extremely surprised.

None of this jibes with the Castle she met a week ago, though it is in keeping with the future Castle she met.

Somehow Castle convinces Alexis to go to bed without returning to the topic at hand. He's gentle, but firm, and Alexis seems to accept his parenting like it's not even there. Alexis gives Kate a quick hug, and when she notices Kate's discomfort, she apologizes.

"Sorry, Kate. I just figure, you know, we have a future together..."

Kate realizes the girl is right, and relaxes, returning the hug. She's not really a toucher, or wasn't, before, but she already feels like she's a different person than she used to be, and something is being remade in her, rapidly and without pause. Alexis then bounds up the stairs that Kate hadn't even noticed when she came in. She's been off her game all night - has been off her game for a week, really. But she's rather pleased she's not going to have to talk to Alexis about sex with her father. After Alexis disappears, she turns back to Castle.

"So you didn't tell her..." Kate says, unable to finish the sentence. She takes another drink of her wine instead. She's more or less had sex with the man and yet can't even mention the word. That bodes well for the future.

"Ah...no. As much as I try to be honest with Alexis, I just ... couldn't. So I just told her that you and I talked."

"You looked different," she says. It's not the thing she thought she'd lead off with.

"You looked beautiful," he replies. She's surprised that there isn't the slightest hint of artifice or flirtation in the statement. Maybe awe?

She shakes her head. She needs to stop being surprised. Obviously she read him wrong, and she needs to drop whatever notions of him she'd formed working on the case. The Castle she met on the case isn't the real one, she thinks. She thinks she's meeting the real one, here. And she's met him before, in the back of a limo, as well as at a book signing. But he doesn't seem to remember that one, so she'll keep it to herself for awhile.

"Do you really think we were married?" she asks.

"It felt like it, didn't it?"

"I don't know," she says, "I've never been married."

"Yeah," he says, coming around the island, sitting on the stool next to her, "but it felt like we'd known each other for a long time. Like we had a personal shorthand. Knew each others rhythms. It felt..."

"...right," she says, finishing the thought for him. She'd thought she'd say comfortable, but the word is out of her mouth without thought. She looks over at him, sitting very close, and a wave of desire comes over her.

She has wanted men before. She's familiar with the pull of attraction. Hell, she'd even felt it for him when she first saw him. But then he'd been so arrogant that she'd been able to push it away.

After her vision, and the way he's acting now, the pull is back, but it's different than anything she's felt before. It's intoxicating, but also terrifying, because she feels like she has no control over any of it. She's not going to be able to push it away now, even if she wanted to.

But maybe she shouldn't be scared. The woman she'd been in the back of that limo was happy and content and joyous in a way she hasn't been in ... well, she's not sure she's ever been that person before. But she wants to be. The habits and fears she's built up as defense mechanisms no longer feel right, no longer feel useful. An extraordinary event has elicited an extraordinary change, and she feels herself almost raw in light of it all.

"Apparently I win the National Book Award, in the future," he says after she doesn't talk for a minute. She looks up, amazed by his arrogance, but when she looks at his face, it's not arrogance she sees, but longing.

This is overwhelming him, too. He's giving them an out - a way to take a step back from it, just a bit. The same way he did with his daughter.

"Is that so?" she asks, regrouping, and he nods.

She gets up from the stool, walks around his loft for a minute, sipping her wine. He stays on his stool, then moves to the couch. She watches him. Last week, he'd seemed like a lion on the prowl, at the bar, in the interrogation room. All of that is gone. It makes him smaller and bigger, all at once. And, oddly enough, scarier. But thrilling too.

She sits, canted towards him, but far enough away to keep her sanity. She feels like she's a different person than she was seven days ago. It makes her wonder.

"I don't get it," she says. Is he different too, or was he always different and she's being allowed to see, now.

"Get what?"

"The police horse, signing body parts, the..." she waves her hand in a semi-circle, meaning the whole playboy thing, which is now obviously an act.

He chuckles, repeats the gesture. "The playboy thing? You have to admit it's a little bit fun."

"Castle," she says, asking him to be serious. She gets a moment of Deja Vu, and she's back in the limo, saying the same admonishment while sitting in his lap.

He leans forward, his forearms resting on his knees. "I guess it started as a way to sell books. Act like Derrick Storm, sell Derrick Storm. It's also a good way to deal with the press and the fans and the like. If you don't sell them a story, they'll make one up for themselves."

"And then?"

He shrugs. "And the attention is addictive for awhile, and so you do it more and more, until you don't notice or remember that it's an act. It's just how you are."

"Is it?" she asks, remembering how he was in the limo, how he is with his daughter.

He just shakes his head. "Sometimes. A little bit. Maybe I got more from my mother than I thought."

She looks at him. His pupils are dark with want, and she knows her own probably are too.

"I want it," she says quietly, looking down at her glass of wine. She means the future they saw, hopes that he knows what she means. She hears him move, feels him sit next to her. His hand lifts her chin, so she's looking at him.

"Me too," he says, and then he is kissing her.

Is this their first kiss or their second, she wonders, before letting herself stop thinking. He's more tentative than she'd have expected, but of course, she is too. This is new to both of them, even if it doesn't feel like it.

She breaks off the kiss, leans her forehead against his cheek. She's feeling young and new, like she's a sixteen year old virgin again. She wonders, for a moment, how many people around the world are like her tonight, reaching out for a future they'd never expected to want.

"I figured I'd never see you again," she says into the crook of his neck.

He laughs a little, and she can feel it more than hear it. "I was working on seeing you again."

She pulls away to look at him. "How's that?"

"I was going to ask Bob if I could shadow you, for book research."

"Bob? You're going to write a book about the NYPD?"

"Bob Weldon," he says, plainly, and it takes her a second to remember that Bob Weldon is the mayor. She just kissed a man that knows and is on a first name basis with the mayor.

Oh, she's going to end up a senator. And she's going to marry the man that's friends with the mayor. Maybe.

"Shadowing me? I'd've hated that."

He laughs again. "Obviously not, if you end up marrying me."

"Maybe I hated it and kicked you out, and then a decade later, I meet you again through Alexis, once you've grown up."

He shifts closer to her.

"I'm going to need more than a decade to grow up. Maybe, after three cases, you love my help so much that you're compelled to lock this down."

She swats him. "I can't believe you just used the phrase 'lock this down.'"

He laughs for a second, and the next thing she knows, he's holding one of her hands, tracing her palm idly with his boyish charm is back, but this time, without the artifice and the arrogance and the play acting, it actually is charming, and a little bit fun, too. She suspects that the real Richard Castle, the one she's now desperate to know better, is probably a bit of an overgrown geek. Maybe she'll let him in on the secret that she is too.

"I do want to shadow you. I've been writing for the last few days, more than I have in months."

"Because of me?"

"Because of you. About you."

She's both flattered and frightened that her favorite writer is using her as a character. But it also feels like giving him too much power. She sort of wants it, sort of doesn't, but she wants him to earn it, either way.

"No. I'll consider you shadowing me for a case or two, if you behave yourself. But I'm vetoing any characters based on me."

"We'll see," he says, and just a little bit of his earlier smugness is back, so she kisses it out of him.

When they break, they are both unmoored and breathless, and she feels like she's seeing dawn after a full night with friends. They have a long and unknown road ahead of them, with a destination that is hoped for, but not yet guaranteed. And though they are still at the beginning, there is something joyful in making the choice, in knowing that happiness might be achieved with nothing more than the continued desire to make it so. As she feels his breath mingle with hers, she feels like they had chosen to move towards their true selves, wherever that will take them.

* * *

 **A/N:** So, when I wrote this, I did so in one big long sitting, just to get it out on paper so I could move on. I figured I'd dump it here and maybe get a few people to read it as nothing more than an interesting distraction. But I've gotten far more of a response than I expected. So now I'm thinking of adding more to this story than the one little chapter I have left, if anyone is interested. Good here, so wrap up, or try to visit some of their future (I'm not going to write 7 seasons worth of alternate future, but...)?


	5. Chapter 5

"If you get injured, you cannot sue the city. If you get shot, you cannot sue the city. If you get killed..."

"My lifeless remains can not sue the city..." Castle interrupts.

"Your heirs, Mr. Castle."

Kate gets up from where she's been leaning against the wall, behind the humorless NYPD lawyer who continues to walk Castle through his paperwork. Castle's treating the whole thing rather flippantly, but it's starting to terrify her, what she's letting him sign up for.

She's had boyfriends in danger before - hell, her last one was an FBI agent - but this is different. Maybe it's because he's not her boyfriend, not really, not yet, or because he's not trained. Or maybe it's because she knows what's at stake. Whatever it is, she's starting to have misgivings about this whole shadowing thing that he's talked her into. She decides to stop paying attention to the conversation, just for her own sanity and to keep the sinking feeling in her stomach at bay.

She had left the loft that night after only a few kisses, rationalizing that they, if they wanted, had a lifetime together. They didn't need to rush. But it had also been because she is worried, a little bit, that seeing the end might cause them to skip to the end. She is committed to getting the moments they deserve.

Plus, the whole idea of having met the love of her life scares the shit out of her, just a little. The idea that he might die following her around scares her nearly as much.

Shouldn't it scare her more?

Dispatch calls, and she takes the relief from her thoughts. She hangs up, heads for the door.

"We have a case?" he asks.

"I have a case. You have paperwork," she says, and runs out the door.

On the way to the crime scene, she starts to regret her actions. He's supposed to come along. A part of her wants him to come along, since he proved to be helpful with their last case. But a part of her is back in the alley where he almost got himself killed two weeks ago. They haven't even slept together yet. They've really only had a single night of talking in his loft, a few phone calls. And yet, she knows what she loses him, if something happens to him.

So she ran away. She does that. She knows herself well enough to know that's a habit, even if she hasn't fully found a way to control it yet.

By the time she's finished at the crime scene and riding the elevator up to 12-F, she's almost worked out what she'll say when she inevitably calls him. Almost.

However, it doesn't matter, because the door opens and he's standing there.

"You ditched me at the precinct," Castle says as the door almost closes on her.

"Didn't you hear the lawyer, Castle? Injured, shot, killed... I'm not sure this is the best idea."

"I doubt whoever killed Nanny McDead and shoved her in a dryer is going to come after me."

"Castle," she admonishes, turning to head down the hall. He clears his throat, and when she turns, he points the other direction.

"I'm not going to get dead, Kate. I have you to protect me. Unless you run away and abandon me."

Point taken, she thinks, but she keeps her mouth shut. Instead she just gives him the smallest of nods. I'll work on that, she thinks. She hopes he gets it.

"How long does this shadowing last, typically?" she asks.

"Depends on how long I take to get inspired," he says with an eye waggle.

She wants to comment on that, flirt back with him a little or shut him down, she's not sure. If she has to worry about the him getting hurt here, at least she can some fun with him being here too. But then they are at 12-F's door and it's back to business.

* * *

After questioning the boyfriend, they head to the park to find the victim's friend Chloe. Castle's starting to get the feel of this case, the general shape and weight, if not the details. He can tell she is too. That part is fun, having someone to bounce the plot off of, back and forth, until they get to the heart of it. He'd thought once he could manufacture that with Gina, and failed. Now he doesn't seem to be trying. It just seems natural.

Not that it makes the case less weird. They are, after all, headed to a part to talk to one nanny about finding another nanny shoved into a dryer.

"Reminds me of when I used to take Alexis to the park," he says.

"You used to take Alexis to the park? Must've been fun."

"Spring, Summer, Fall, we were here every day. Alexis' mom was doing community theater, so she was on the road a lot, and I had custody... what?"

He watches as a cute little smile comes over her face. He's been able to gather that she's still not used to dropping her guard around him, despite their new understanding. He likes it though, this sense of discovery. It reminds him of rereading a favorite book, getting to enjoy the language and the rhythms the author uses, rather than focusing on the plot.

"Nothing, I just never figured you for Mr. Mom."

"Some of the best days of my life," he says honestly. He remembers the time well, after Meredith and before Gina, how the women would hit on him, day after day. He has to admit his ego needed it, after Meredith cheated on him, and for a few years, random dating kept the demons at bay.

"That's kinda nice," she says.

"Well, I was between marriages and ..." he stops himself. Bragging about other women isn't going to help him in the least with Kate Beckett. He actually sort of likes that about her, but he's still got some habits to break.

She doesn't seem to notice his abrupt stop. "How many times have you been married?" she asks, and he can feel the edge of worry in her voice.

"Twice. You?"

"Not yet."

"Well, I think you should be. You'll enjoy it," he says, and he can tell she's picturing what he's picturing, but he doesn't push anymore. They'll get there, eventually, even though he can see her biting back some sort of comment. She has her own habits to break.

But then they spot the girl in the red vest, and it is back to work...

* * *

After they take Chloe into custody, she needs to get out onto the street, get some fresh air. She's keyed up from everything, from negotiating with Chloe to watching her cut herself, to knowing that Castle was there, in the room, to Castle's own ability to put his foot in his mouth.

"See, I managed to make it through the case without getting injured, shot, or killed," he says to her.

Seriously?

"You shouldn't have come in the room. I asked you not to."

"I know, but ... I really liked that solidarity thing you ran in there."

"I wasn't running anything," she says, angry. This isn't part of his bravado, he's just actually clueless here. Somehow that makes it worse. She has to get away from him. She walks away, ignoring as he yells out to her.

Okay, so he's not a playboy. But he's still privileged, clueless, crude, cute, insightful, coarse... she tries, and fails, to stop thinking about him after she grabs a cab and heads home. She's not terribly successful, even as she gets to her apartment, changes, opens a bottle of wine.

She's worked two cases with him, and while she has to admit he's been helpful both times, she's also wanted to kill him twice. Though mostly she's wanted to kill him because he seems determined to kill himself.

She needs more wine.

Instead she gets a knock on the door.

She knows it's him before she answers.

"So is a thing you do?" he asks as soon as she opens the door.

"What thing?"

"This running away thing," Castle says, pushing past Kate into her apartment.

"How do you know where I live?"

"Google. Don't change the subject. Is this going to happen every time I piss you off? I'll have to go hunt you down?"

"I didn't..."

She watches as he walks into her kitchen, examines the empty bottle of wine on the counter. He frowns and throws it in the garbage. "I'm glad I brought this," he says, holding a bottle of wine over his shoulder so she can see.

"...I'm not hiding."

"No, you just tore away from our crime scene like your hair was on fire. And I was going to ask you to dinner, too."

He hands her a glass of whatever wine he's brought. She takes a sip. Of course it's better than hers. Damn him.

"So you want to tell me why?"

She's not going to get rid of him, she sees, as he sits down on her couch, and sips his wine. She could just walk into her bedroom, close the door, but what would that solve?

"This isn't a game," she says.

"I know it's not."

"Do you?"

He comes and sits next to her, but doesn't turn to face her. They both stare off into her apartment.

"I don't think it's a game, Kate."

"I need you to act like it. I asked you to stay out of the room."

"But you went in anyway."

"It's my job."

"And I need to understand it."

"You don't have to put yourself in danger to do it."

"I was worried about you."

Kate sighs. She turns to him then, letting herself look at him, really look at him, for the first time since he entered her apartment. She sees it then, for a second, how charm is his only armor in the world, and he doesn't know how to adapt to that not being enough. It doesn't fit in her world, makes him seem flippant. A jerk. So she'll have to be his armor. But he has to let her.

"It get easier?"

"What?"

"Worrying about your partner?"

She laughs, feeling just a bit free for the first time in two days.

"Partner?"

"Debonair shadow, in your case. Beautiful guide to the ways of justice, in mine."

"Too thick, Castle."

"Too thick?"

"Just a tad," she says, but she leans against his shoulder anyway.

"We okay, or you gonna bolt on me again?"

She couldn't promise him anything yet, not all the things she knew she'd promise, eventually. But she bumps him in the shoulder anyway.

"Just please learn to let me keep you safe, and we'll be good. Okay?"

He gives her a small smile, and taps her glass with his.

"Okay."

* * *

 **A/N:** I got a lot of support to continue this (thank you thank you!). I have a basic idea plotted out now. It will drift farther away from the main show as things go on...


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** Ain't got no claim on FlashForward or Castle

 **A/N:** Early-mid Season 1, but no references to episode specifics

* * *

The precinct is dead.

Castle finishes putting a paperclip on his chain, and shows her his completed masterpiece. She's looks at it out of the corner of her eye, like a bored mom, before going back to her paperwork.

"Is your work always this boring?" he asks after his artwork fails to distract her.

"You don't have to be here, you know," she says, but there isn't any malice in it. She's just as bored as he is.

They've had two body drops in nine days, both which turned out to be simple suicides. The whole squad is caught up on paperwork, and has descended into hunting through the cold cases.

Castle has given up on his cold case - a drowning case nearly thirty years old - that someone had obviously only kept open out of sympathy for the widow. Kate's is no more interesting; her last witness died more than a decade ago.

"Come on, Beckett, play hooky with me. You know you want to. Somewhere in that perfect employee is a former wild child, I bet."

She smirks, because its 4:45pm, so they'd be engaging in the most mild form of hooky ever, and because she hasn't told him about the motorcycle or the rocker boyfriend from her high school crazy days yet. She may let him see the tattoo pretty soon though.

She decides not to speak, just gets up and grabs her jacket. Castle eagerly bounds up after her, coming out of the homely little chair she found for him in the supply closet.

"Where we headed, Beckett?" he asks when they get down to the street. Rather than answer, she hooks her arm in his and drags him around the corner to a little place she likes, Remy's.

He tries to play it cool, but he knows she can see the little glint in his eye as he looks around and when he orders the ridiculous double burger, fries, and a shake. She follow suits. He figures she must run incredible distances, considering how she eats against how she looks.

"It's not always that dead," she finally answers his question from before, after they order.

"I have a theory why that is," he says, leaning forward on his forearms. He's delighted when she matches him.

"Tell me, oh wise one."

"Imagine you hate your boss. You just hate him, and every night you take the 6 train home dreaming up ways to kill him. But then The Event happens, and you see yourself in prison, so you decide to just get another job instead."

"Hmmm," she says, low in her throat and he can feel the sound low in his stomach. "Morbid. Maybe you're thinking of having an affair, but then you see your future and you're just fighting with your new mistress instead. So you reconcile with your wife and she, in turn, doesn't kill you."

"But if she killed you, you wouldn't see your future at all..."

"And maybe it's just a lull, and we're going to end up with three body drops tomorrow."

He watches her. Other than that first night, they haven't really talked about The Event, and he's already gathered she'd prefer to avoid it. He, for the most part, would as well, largely worried that the magic might evaporate if they look at it too closely. And while a cottage industry has cropped up around the event - repurposed psychics, scientists starting companies to redo The Event, e-book romances, PIs working to help people find their future wives, boyfriends, etc. Castle's ignored it all in lieu of following Beckett and working on his two new novels. He saw what he needed - it doesn't need to go further than that.

"So, is this a cop hangout?" he asks.

"Not cool enough for a first date?"

"Only thing I need for a date is you."

"Cheesy," she says, but she blushes too, just a little. "I figured you'd want Per Se."

"Not Per Se, per se, but I'd like to take you to Nobu sometime."

"I don't like being shown off, Castle."

"I was thinking more that you'd like to try the black cod."

She bites into her burger. "I'm more of a burger and fries girl," she replies.

"And my novels."

She tilts her head at the change of subject. "I'm just a fan of the genre."

"So what else? Alex Cross? Kay Scarpetta?"

"Scarpetta's good. I like Jack Reacher too."

"So bookshelves filled with mysteries and thrillers."

"I'll have you know there are some Nabakovs and Pynchons and the like there too."

"Different books for different moods?"

She sips at her shake, but her eyes answer the question.

"And sometimes you can be in the mood for a burger, and sometimes you can be in the mood for black cod with miso."

Her eyes flare for just a second realizing he's won. He loves how competitive she can be, and she seems to enjoy competing with him. The back and forth can be thrilling. He likes that she enjoys when he wins as much as when she does. They are evenly matched.

"So what's the protocol, Castle?"

"Protocol for what?"

"Sleepovers."

He gulps back a bit of his shake, because oh god, Kate is giving him her best cop look, like she's going to get what she wants, and the idea that that is him is nearly overwhelming.

"There's no protocol. I mean, I don't sleep around enough that I have to have rules and things," he manages to choke out.

She stares at him, knowing there is more.

"I don't ... I don't let anyone meet Alexis. Not until it's serious. I dated Gina... my ex-wife... for six months before I introduced Alexis to her. But that's not really a concern here, is it?"

The light goes out of her eyes, fast, and he curses himself. But then he realizes what has gotten to her.

"A little bit too heavy for first date talk?" he asks. She nods.

Castle drops his burger, leans back in his chair.

"Kate, your going to have to help me out here."

"I'm not following."

"Look, when I asked you out, I wanted more than a conquest..."

"I know."

"...but I wasn't exactly hunting for wife number three, either. And let's be honest - what're the chances you and I would've ever seen each other again if The Event hadn't happened?"

Kate shrugs. Part of her hopes, but she knows that the reality of her life is that she'd most likely be at home, eating leftover take-out, and wishing she'd taken up Castle on his offer from weeks earlier.

"Right. I don't know either. But I really don't want ... or know how to pretend that this is less than this is."

"But do we have to act like it's everything?"

"I don't know. I don't know if it's amazing or terrifying to think of us as a foregone conclusion."

"We're not a foregone conclusion," she says, getting up from the table and walking out.

He watches her for all of a second, before throwing a bunch of cash on the table and chasing her out of the restaurant.

He catches her shoulder a half a block away, risking a broken arm as he spins her around. He sees it all on her face for the split second before she shuts down - anger, fear, longing.

"You didn't hear me back there."

"I did. I'm a sure thing."

"Kate. That isn't what I said. I said I'm amazed and I'm terrified and I have no idea what to do about it."

He lets go of her arm, and takes a sigh of relief when she doesn't leave. But she doesn't talk either.

"I know how to date casually, and I know how to fuck up a marriage. I don't know how to do ... this," he says, waving back and forth between her and him, "... other than I know I can't pretend or minimize what I saw and felt."

She leans forward, rests her head on his shoulder for just a moment. "I know," she says finally. "me either. But I worry we're already on different pages."

"As long as it's the same book, I think we can be okay."

"I'm not good at this."

"I'm not either. Maybe we can learn together?"

"I'd like that," she says, "But I think I need a raincheck on the sleepover."

He chuckles. "Fair enough. But it's early. Maybe a walk at least?"

She leans back, twirls around and walks away smiling. After a few steps she turns back.

"I thought we were walking? Do I need to wait for you to catch up?"

He shakes his head. This woman is going to be the death of him. But he jogs after her anyway.


End file.
